THE NEW YORKER most interesting director, but this movie is a failed exercise in melancholy over times past. The lingering attention to the aging of the musicians-who are actually still youngish but regarded by themselves and the film as passé-is apt to seem maudlin and spoiled- child. The ound system is an overloud night- mare that makes one feel like a fly caught in a twenty-four-track-stereo biscuit box. (Har- old Clurman; July 5-7.) LeT IT BE (1970)- The Beatles at rehearsal- older and plumper and as fine company as ever-seen together on film for what is now inescapably the last time. It is a bad movie but a touching one. Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. (Harold Clurman; July 10-11 ) MeTRoPoLIS (1926)-H. G. Wells called this German silent, directed by Fritz Lang, "quite the silliest film;" Hitler was so impressed by the conception that many years later he tried (unsuçcessfully) to persuade Lang to make Nazi movies. Lang's prophetic city of the twenty-first century (suggested by his first view of New York) has two levels: one for the rich and pleasure-loving, the other-laby- rinthine, underground-for the slave workers who tend the machines. The industrialist-ty- rant who runs Metropolis plots to incite riots so that he can crush the workers' rebellious- ness. His son has gone down to the workers and fallen in love with the saintly firebrand Maria (Brigitte Helm). The tyrant plots with an inventor, Rotwang (a mad medieval type like Dr. Caligari and, with his mechanical arm, father to Dr. Strangelove), who, in a phenomenal science-fiction laboratory se- quence, creates a steel double for Maria-the false Maria, who leads the masses to revolt. But the destruction gets out of hand, the chil- dren of the workers are about to be caught in a flood, and all of Metropolis would be de- stroyed were it not for the final alliance of the industrialist, his son, the true Maria, and the workers. One of the last examples of the imaginative-but often monstrous-gran- deur of the Golden Period of German film, "Metropolis" is a spectacular instance of expressionist design (grouped human beings are used architecturally), with moments of al- most incredible beauty and power (the vi- sionary sequence about the Tower of Babel), absurd ineptitudes (the lovesick hero in his preposterous knickerbockers), and oddities that defy analysis (the robot vamp's bizarre, lewd wink) It's a wonderful, stupefying folly. With Alfred Abel as the industrialist, Gustav Frölich as his son, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp, and Heinrich George. Script by Thea von Harbou (who did go to work for the Nazis); cinematography by Karl Freund and Günther Rittau, with Eugen Schüfftan shoot- ing the special effects. (Carnegie Hall Cinema; July 8.) New YORK. NEW YORK (1977)-An honest failure. This United Artists big-budget musical film, directed by Martin Scorsese, suffers from too many conflicting intentions. Scorsese works within the artifices of forties movie-musical romances and stylizes the sets in order to em- phasize the shot-on-a-soundstage look. Evok- ing the movie past, he's trying to get at the dark side that was left out of the old cliché plots. But the improvisational, Cassavetes- like psychodrama that develops between the stars (Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli) seems hollow and makes us uneasy, and seq uences go on covering the same uncertain ground. De Niro plays a restless hipster, a tenor-sax player who's frustrated In the big- band era-he's already into the progressive bop that's not yet accepted. Minnelli is a big- band singer who becomes popular with a wide audience through records and in musical movies. The story is about their meeting at a VJ Day celebration, their marriage, its dis- solution, and their diverging musical paths With Diahnne Abbott as the Harlem Club singer, Lionel Stander, Barry Primus, Mary Kay Place, Lenny GaInes, George Memmoli, and George Auld, who gives a good, sour per- formance as the jaundiced band leader and also dubs De Niro's sax. In addition to some mellow big-band standards, there are new songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb. The screenplay started with Earl Mac Rauch; then Mardik Martin, the cast, and others worked on it. The cinematography is by Laszlo Kovacs; Irving Lerner and Marcia Lucas were the editors. (The film is dedicated to Lerner, who died during the final editing stages) (Cinema I; through July 9.) NIGHT AND DAY (1946)-William Bowers, one of the three scenarists, said later that he was so ashamed of this picture that about a year 23 LOS . ANGELES Come to LA and soak up some color. The beige beaches and blue waters of the Pacific The limelight of Hollywood. The snow-white mountains The earth-toned deserts. The gold mine of culture. And the mellow yellow mood of it all LA s the place '\, ,, , 0 J " I , \' r \\ ( , '1' ' I f ) /":..",.... Î' "\' I \ \ For your copy of the LA Pleasure Packet, wnte: Greater Los Angeles VISItOrS and Convention Bureau, 505 S. Flower St., L.A., CA 90071 / \ ' .. \ " ". \ 'I -1t We don1t cut corners ./'" ." ar a" DuPontTEF @1980Hartmann Luggage Lebanon Tennessee 37007 \Oil & n repeller